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Food banks sometimes struggle to fill
their coffers with enough food to supply their community. Why, then, would a food
bank that serves one of the country’s largest metro areas decide to start
rejecting donations?

Because, quite simply, they have a duty
to serve their community the best food they can – instead of just whatever they
can get.

As the largest food bank in Washington
D.C., Capital Area Food Bank is similar to many across the country. Each year,
millions of pounds of food roll through their doors and are then distributed
back to members of the community and their more than 400 non-profit partners.
Like other community food banks, Capital Area Food Bank relies on the donations
of religious organizations, non-profit sponsors, and even government grants to
continue their work in the Washington D.C., Virginia, and Maryland areas. The
actual food, however, often comes from local grocery stores, food warehouses,
and restaurants.

Capital
Area Food Bank President and CEO Nancy Roman explains why her organization is
revolutionizing how donated food is accepted, processed, and distributed to
people in need.

A few years ago, the food bank noticed
that donations were plentiful, but they weren’t exactly healthy. Truck after
truck rolled in with sugar-laden soda and leftover holiday candy. While an
occasional treat is nice, these foods are seriously lacking in nutrition and
cannot sustainably feed families. So the group decided to take action.

To start, they created a wellness
rating system that let them grade foods on healthfulness. This scale is a
nutrition tracker of sorts. It takes into account a food’s salt, sugar, and
fiber content. Thanks to the wellness rating, certain foods — such as soda — were
soon rejected completely, and the needle started inching forward towards
healthy and nutritious foods. Fruits and vegetable donations increased, too.
But one thing remained woefully abundant: donations of processed foods.

“Our inventory looks a lot like what
Americans eat,” says Nancy Roman, Capital Area Food Bank President and CEO. “There’s
a lot of processed food consumed in this country, so not surprisingly, we were
getting it. We made a lot of progress [with the wellness ratings]. We moved the
dial of healthy foods from 52 to 89 percent.”

It was against that remaining
percentage, however, that Roman decided to start investing her greatest energy.
“When I looked at that last mile, the last 18 percent that didn’t check the box
of wellness food, you could see that it was really a lot of well-intentioned
retail donations,” Roman says.

From sheet cakes to vegetables

Roman recalls the story of the
“exploding sheet cakes” to illustrate how retailers affected the food bank’s supply
— and how they’re now helping recreate it.

One day, while walking through the
warehouse, Roman noticed loads of sheet cakes. When she inquired why the food
bank had so many sheet cakes, she was told their rules require only a small
percentage of the food they give to their clients be snacks. The large cakes,
as it turns out, didn’t fit into that balance.

She found that most of the sheet cakes
were coming from a single donor. She wrote to that donor and explained that she
and the organization deeply appreciated the work their grocery store had done
in the past, but they could no longer accept these sheet cakes in good
conscience. The sheet cake episode allowed Roman one of her first chances to
redefine how Capital Area Food Bank would establish rules for their clients.

“It’s always fun when you see the
needle of progress moving, but then it stops moving. I realized we couldn’t
move it further without doing it in partnership with our donors,” Roman says. “I
tried to have careful, respectful discussions with the donors.” Those
discussions paid off. The grocery store responded, and their donations changed.

The retail community, restaurants, and
partners have responded in kind, too. More fruits and vegetables are rolling
in, while soda and leftover candy don’t even make it onto the trucks. “Our
drivers are empowered — if there’s a full bucket with Halloween candy, they
know to turn it away,” Roman says.

Donations are improving, too. The
organization received an $80,000 grant last year to supply their community with
greens, and they’ve established a fund for buying fruits and vegetables from
local farmers.

The changes, as Roman points out, were
an effort to keep up with the shifting attitudes and philosophies of the
American public at large. But their clients were craving these changes, too.

“This has really been demand driven.
The clients have been hearing from their doctors for years that they need to
eat better,” she says. “Of all the people we’re serving, 49 percent have high
blood pressure or heart disease. Twenty-three percent have diabetes or live
with a diabetic. So they’re well aware that they’re not supposed to have [processed]
food. Unfortunately, vegetables are hard to get inexpensively, so they love the
produce they’re getting. Our clients would rather have vegetables than leftover
candy.”

Of course, as the food deliveries
change, so do the needs of the clients. That’s where the Capital Area Food
Bank’s second level of service really shines.

Making health accessible

Food education is particularly important
for the food bank and its non-profit partners. Along with delivering food,
they’re working to educate their clients and make them more comfortable with
healthy foods.

“The medical community has done a great
job of telling people what they should do. The hard part is doing it. If you
live in a low-income neighborhood, chances are you don’t have a grocery store
in your neighborhood, and chances are the corner store has mostly processed
food, maybe a little bit of fresh produce. Chances are that transportation is
challenging, so it’s hard for you to get to a farmers’ market or a grocery
store that might be out of your neighborhood. Chances are you’re surrounded by
fast food options,” Roman says. “So they know they should be eating less sugar
in everything, but it’s the next layer of access. That’s why our recipes are so
important.”

Roman is referring to the food bank’s
collection of 95 “cheap, fast, and tasty” recipes. Each recipe is designed to
make the transition from drive-thru dinners to healthful home-cooked meals
easier and more attainable for their clients, many of whom may be first-time
cooks.

While the food bank’s journey hasn’t
been lightning swift or as painless as they would hope, Roman says their goals
of promoting healthier diets for the communities they serve is one they’ll
gladly keep pressing. If they waiver in their dedication to their philosophy,
they need only sit with someone from their community to understand the real and
lasting impact they’re having.

Roman recalls talking with a single mom
at an elementary school where the food bank and partner non-profits work. “She
was laughing with joy about the food that she had received. She was telling me
how wonderful it was that her children were experiencing vegetables for the
first time,” Roman recalls. “You’re seeing first-hand what you know is
happening and what you’re hearing about, but here’s this woman telling you they
loved the sautéed cabbage.” That, Roman says, is reason enough to keep going.

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